How To Weave A Dog {With Biscuit Knot / Quad Stitch}

This tutorial shows how you can weave a dog with plastic wire or paracord using Biscuit knot (also called quad stitch).

This is a quick weekend project that will require close to one bundle of wire. This cute dog can be woven in a couple of hours. It does have a lot of steps that you have to follow carefully without skipping any steps. But I have added a lot of photos to make it as simple as possible.

Prerequisites

To weave this dog, you have to know to weave the biscuit knot.

If you are not familiar with that knot, please check these tutorials before you proceed. The tutorials linked below will show how

you can make the biscuit knot and also

join two biscuit knots with each other.

I have linked to both the photo tutorial as well as video tutorials in two languages.

I also have a tutorial for dog made with box knot. If you are interested in weaving a dog with the easier box knot first, here is the tutorial for that.

Things Needed

32 pieces of wire that are 3.10 meters (10¼ feet) long.

To make it easier for you to follow this tutorial, I have used white (16 pieces) and 4 different colors (4 wire pieces each). Of course, you will be cutting 32 pieces from the same wire bundle.

Method for weaving 3D dog with biscuit knot

This is the order in which we will be weaving the biscuit knot/ quad stitch 3D dog.

Start with the tail

Weave the head

Join tail and head together.

Weave the body of the dog

Finish by weaving the four legs.

1. Weaving the dog’s tail

Take 8 wire pieces, fold them into halves and make 2 biscuit knots with them. Place them near each other.

Join these two knots just like we join two biscuit knots. Need help with this? Check the biscuit knot tutorials mentioned above.

Now you will have a diamond shape that is formed by 4 biscuit knots. There are 4 sets of parallel wires traveling in 4 different directions. Make knots with them and triangle shaped holes will be formed below these new knots.

Add 3 more knots and the tail will look like a shallow cup at this point.

Now you will see wires crisscrossing each other. Make biscuit knots with wires that crisscross each other. A diamond is formed on each of the 4 sides of the tail.

Right now you will have a small cup shape and this will be the tip of the dog’s tail. Now we have to make the tail curled.

There are 4 sides. Take any one side and find two wires that are crossing each other and make knot with them.

Now there will be 4 parallel wires traveling left and 4 parallel wires traveling right. Make knots with them.

Triangle shaped holes will be formed. Now make a knot with the wire wires coming out of these two knots as pointed by the yellow arrow on the right side.

The tail has curled a little.

Turn to the side of the tail. On the left and right sides of the tail, there will be wires crossing each other. Make knots with them and pentagon shaped holes will be formed.

So make knots with wires from the 4th and 1st knot to get the 5th knot. Continue to weave the wires from 4th knot till the tip of the tail as shown in the picture above.

Do this on both sides of the tail.

Make knots with wires crossing each other and the tail will look like this.

One side of tail will be longer than the other. Turn to the short side and make a knot with wires crossing each other.

This knot will be the one that we use to join the tail with the head. Keep this aside and we will need it only after we have finished the head of the dog.

2. Weaving head of the dog

Take the rest of the 8 white wires and make 2 knots with them. The first few steps will be the same as that of the tail.

Place the two knots near each other and make knots with wires that cross each other.

Make knots with parallel wires to form 4 triangle shaped holes.

Weave wires that cross each other. Now there are diamonds formed by 4 knots on each side.

This is the tips of the dog’s nose. The face will be wider than the nose so we have to add more wire pieces now.

Choose any of the 4 sides and we will be adding the additional wires. Choose a white knot and add 2 green wires to make a knot on each side.

We will see two green wires traveling up and crossing each other. Make a knot with them and you will have a pure green knot at the top.

Next make a knot with the green wires traveling down on both the left and right sides. A pentagon shaped hole will be formed on the left and right when you make a knot with the 4th and 1st knots.

Now it is time to add the next color – Red. The procedure is pretty much the same that was followed for the green.

From this angle you will be able to see the pentagons formed by the green wires clearly.

Add the red wires and then weave the red wires that are traveling down on both the left and right. We will make two knots on the left and 2 knots on the right. Right now, your dog’s face should look like the picture shown above (right).

Make a knot with four parallel white wires on the left and on the right as shown below. A triangle shaped hole will be formed. This will begin to form the shape of the face and change the direction of the white wire which will now start traveling up.

Now make a knot with wires coming out of this new white knot with the green wires near it.

After this step, you will see that there are two sets of parallel wires (white and green) on the left and right. Yellow arrows point to these wires in the picture above. Make a knot with them. This will again form a triangle shaped hole. The face of the dog is almost done.

There will be a total of 4 triangles – 2 triangles on each side (as shown by the arrows in the picture).

At the top, you will see white and red wires crossing each other. Make knots as shown below.

This will form a white diamond at the top. We have finished weaving the nose, eyes and forehead of the dog.

Now it is time to weave the back of the neck and for this we need more wire. Add the next color as shown below.

Make a knot with the 4 blue wires and you will have a pure blue knot. This pure blue knot at the tip will be used when we connect the head to the tail later. For now, we will not do anything with it.

Now it is time to weave the cheeks/ sides of the face on both sides.

Red and green wires will be traveling up on both sides. You will weave them with wires coming out of 4 knots.

This will bring the red and green wires all the way up to the back of the neck.

While weaving the red wires, you would have created a pentagon shaped hole on each side of the face.

Time to weave the bottom part of the dog’s face.

The tip of the dog’s nose has a white diamond.

Make knots with white wires that cross each other and this will form the second white diamond.

Note how I have placed the green wires above the 2 white diamonds. As shown above, we will be bringing the green wires from both sides to meet each other.

So weave and bring the green wires on both sides so they meet each other as shown below. You will be making 3 knots with each green wire.

While weaving the green wires, a pentagon shaped hole will be formed on each side.

Once the pure green knot has been made, you will see 3 wires from each side crossing each other. Make knots with them. A diamond shape will be formed on the left side of the neck.

Repeat for other side as well.

Now it is time to join both sides of the neck.

Again you will see wires crossing each other. Make knots with them and a diamond shape will be formed in this gap.

The tip will be formed by a pure blue color knot.

This is how the puppy’s head will look.

Both tips will have pure blue knots.

3. Joining tail and head of dog

We will be joining the head and the tail now. While weaving the tail, I pointed to the knot that will be used to join the tail with the head. Joining any other knot will make the dog’s tail curl in some other direction. Just to remind you, the tip of the head on the top was a pure blue color knot.

Place them near each other as shown below.

Make knots with wires that cross each other. Two mixed color knots (white and blue) were made.

Add the 4th and final color (purple) to the back of tail. This will be needed to weave the back of the dog’s body.

Wrap the blue wires around tail till you reach the pure purple knot.

One pentagon and one triangle shaped hole will be formed on each side.

Bring the blue wires from both sides till they meet.

4. Weaving sides of dog’s body

Now it is time to weave the sides of the puppy’s body. Find the triangle shaped hole that we just made when wrapping the blue wire around the tail. The yellow arrow in the picture below points to that triangle.

There will be 4 pairs of wires before it. And these 4 pairs will be crossing 5 pairs of wires that are traveling backwards from the head side. Make knots with wires that cross each other.

Repeat the same procedure for the other side of the body as well (4 pairs of wires traveling from tail side will be crossing 5 pairs of wires coming from the head side).

Both sides of the dog’s body are done.

5. Weaving belly of dog

Join the knots at the tip of both sides as shown below.

One pure purple knot was formed on the left and one pure white knot was formed on the right.

This will split the wires into two halves with 32 wires each. If you count and find that one side has more wires than the other, it means that you have not joined the belly of the dog properly. Correct the mistake immediately or you will not be able to weave the puppy’s legs.

The 32 wires near the head will be used for weaving the dog’s forelegs and the other 32 wires near the tail will be used to weave the two hind legs.

Continue to weave the wires that cross each other in the belly area till you get 3 diamonds like this.

Next we are going to split the 32 wires into two groups for making left and right legs. As you can see in the picture above, the two blue knots at the ends can easily be joined to the belly.

Now pull the tip of the tail and the head closer to the belly as shown above. Join them together

The wires have now been split into 4 equal groups and each group will have 16 wire pieces and it is now time to weave the legs. Count and check if each group has 16 wire pieces. Correct mistakes immediately before proceeding to next step.

6. Weaving legs of dog

Note: There are a couple of steps that you have to do in each leg before you start or else your dog’s legs will be grow in a wrong direction.

Each leg will have 3 pentagon shaped holes at its base. The location of the pentagons will decide the direction in which the legs will grow. If the pentagon is made in the wrong place, the leg will be stretching sideways rather than growing straight below the body.

The legs have to come down straight as shown below.

Weaving hind legs of dog

Step 1 As you can see in the picture added below, the white wires are being crossed by both the green and blue wires.

Which wire should be used first to make a knot with the white wire? I have this simple tip that will be very helpful for you.

The green wire travels longer distance and comes all the way from the head but the blue wire comes from the back of the dog. Give 1st preference to the wire that travels longer distance. So make the knot between white and green first (4th knot) and then make a knot between green and blue (5th knot).

Now the 1st pentagon will be in correct position.

Step 2: To position the other two pentagons properly, you have to find these two wires that are crossing each other.

You can find them next to the triangle shaped hole on the back of the dog. Make a knot with these two wires first.

Now this knot has 2 white wires traveling left and another set traveling right. Starting with the two wires, you can proceed to simply make knots with wires that cross each other till the leg reaches the desired height.

Weaving forelegs of dog

Just like the hind legs, the forelegs also require two steps.

Step 1: You will see 2 wires (white and blue) crossing the purple wire. Again, choose the wire that travels longer distance to reach there.

White travels longer distance all the way from the tail side while the blue is from the head side. So make knot with white and purple first and then make knot with white and blue which will form the pentagon as shown below.

Step 2:

Find the two wires (below the ears region) that cross each other and make a knot with them.

Start with the wires coming out of this knot and start making knots whenever wires cross each other till the leg reaches the desired height.

Leaving 4 inches cut the excess wire and insert them into the legs. You can also weave them into the neighboring knot like we did in the rainbow Christmas star.